Analytics firm estimates that Marathon has sold 1.2 million copies, but says only 19% are on PS5
Less than a fifth of the people playing Sony’s first-party game are reportedly playing on its console
Marathon has sold 1.2 million copies but the vast majority of those aren’t on PlayStation 5, according to a report from a games analytics firm.
Norway-based Alinea Analytics estimates that Bungie‘s online first-person extraction shooter has sold around 1.2 million copies, generating gross revenues of $55 million so far,
Despite Bungie being part of the PlayStation Studios family, however, Alinea estimates that the vast majority of the game’s audience – just under 70% – is based on Steam, with around 800,000 copies sold on Valve‘s PC platform.
It estimates that around 217,000 copies were sold on PS5 (around 19% of the total share), while Xbox isn’t too far behind with 133,000 copies sold (11%), meaning console players combined make up around 30% of the game’s total sales to date.
“Marathon is technically a first-party Sony title, so seeing the home console struggle to break 20% of the volume is a notable data point for the ongoing platform-agnostic debate,” the firm’s head of market analysis Rhys Elliott wrote.
“PlayStation Studios online games will almost certainly continue being multiplatform (despite Sony reportedly pulling back on PC releases).”
The firm also suggested that one of the reasons Marathon hasn’t initially seen the same surge of players as Arc Raiders is because the free ‘server slam’ test events held before release had players coming away with different impressions on each game.
It notes that both Marathon and Arc Raiders were tracking similarly in terms of sales three weeks before release. During Arc Raiders’ server slam, sales leapt up 80% as players enjoyed what they played. “Players jumped in, realised the water was fine, and immediately opened their wallets,” Elliott said.
In the four days following a similar test event for Marathon, however, sales ‘only’ increased 49%, something Elliott attributes to the game’s more complex onboarding process and awkward user interface.
“Bungie could have had more time to fix the onboarding process had the beta happened earlier,” Elliott suggested, “but Marathon launched three days after the beta finished. These factors limited the launch sales quite a bit, I reckon.”
Despite this, Alinea suggests that Marathon has found its audience and has “settled into a respectable rhythm”, with around 345,000 daily active users – down from the 478,000 on its first Saturday, but seemingly levelling out rather than continuing to drop.
22% of the game’s Steam players have already played the game for more than 50 hours, with nearly 7% – around 56,000 players – already clocking 100 hours in it.
“This data suggests that once the Bungie magic clicks, it hooks players deeper than the average extraction shooter,” Elliott says.
VGC’s Marathon review aligns with Alinea’s analysis, calling it “a hostile beast worth taming” and stressing that there’s an enjoyable game to be found for those willing to put the time into it.
“Marathon is reminiscent of some of the toughest parts of Destiny 2, moments of overwhelming hostility where you feel endangered even while having optimal equipment for the task,” we wrote. “The type of challenge that reminds you that you can never be too safe, and that danger is always looming above your head.
“But it’s those contesting moments, in Marathon and elsewhere, that reflect a tale of resilience. One can only hope that Bungie is given the grace of time to actually put up a fight.”
